Future 'bleak' for Coleraine campus?

In a written statement from ‘concerned and distraught acadmics’ on the campus to The Coleraine Times, staff claim that “no new initiatives are in the pipeline for Coleraine as efforts are made to relocate activities from Jordanstown to a city centre site in Belfast and to appease the University for Derry (U4D) lobby group, including the proposed transfer of Coleraine's flagship programmes in nursing to the Magee campus.”

The statement went on to say: “The Belfast development will cost over 250 million; money which the University does not possess and will not be able to repay.

“Developments at the Magee campus have also been promised a further 250 million. Meanwhile staff on all campuses and in all grades are facing redundancies and the prospect of pay cuts as the Belfast and Derry ‘debt mountain’ looms and government spending cuts are implemented over the coming years.

“In announcing the Belfast and Magee expansions in January 2009, the Vice Chancellor, Richard Barnett, stated that the Coleraine campus would remain at ‘steady state’ in terms of student numbers (this was interpreted by most as an indication of a lack of future commitment to the campus).

2In attempting to rebut this perception to Coleraine Borough Council in October 2009, the Vice Chancellor and the then new Provost, Robert Hutchinson, announced the planned development of a business park and a new 7 million sports centre on the campus.

“Professor Hutchinson, in affirming the University's commitment to Coleraine, stated to the Council that he “would resign” if there was any diminution of support for the campus.

Within four months of the Council meeting, the sports centre plan was dropped, apparently due to lack of funds (no other major project on any other campus was cancelled).

“It was then discovered that senior management, led by Professor Barnett, had, in 2005, not only stopped the further development of the much heralded Science Park established at Coleraine in 2001, but had also unilaterally returned 4.25 million awarded by the Northern Ireland Science Park Foundation for that purpose.

“No action whatsoever has been taken by the University on the proposed business park promised to the Council last year. Professor Barnett, also in 2005, closed the Portrush (former Catering College) site, transferring all Hotel and Catering activities to Belfast and discontinued planning for a new pharmacy development at Coleraine.

Pharmacy has since been re-established as a result of pressure and funding from business interests in Saudi Arabia.

Staff morale at Coleraine is at rock bottom. As one soon-to-be retired academic said recently: ‘The atmosphere is now even worse than in the gloom and doom days just before the merger in 1984.

“‘At least then there was hope that things could get better and that there were some able and committed senior officers supporting Coleraine. The current lot have neither vision nor a plan.

“‘They just lurch from placating one pressure group to another. They are rolling over in response to political and business interests in Belfast and Derry. All of the tremendous developments of the past 15 years are being vandalised".

The general feeling is of a management team with little academic ballast.

As another senior academic said: "There is little commitment to real excellence. Management would be delighted if all the top researchers resigned and the place was entirely populated by supine mediocrities’.

“It is widely believed that management have secretly and covertly capitulated to the aims of the U4D group and have agreed to build up the Magee campus through transfers, prior to its break-off within the next few years as a separate university.

“In such circumstances it is inconceivable that the University's headquarters would remain at Coleraine. High level pressure by senior management is currently being brought covertly to bear on the Faculty of Life and Health Sciences to transfer its nursing programmes from Coleraine to Magee.

“It is understood that the U4D group is demanding this. Most university staff are unaware of this plan. Nursing, which was ranked in the top three in the UK in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise, is one of the University's strongest areas. Its loss would be a body blow to Coleraine.

“The general feeling is that Coleraine no longer has a champion among the senior management and, unlike Belfast and Derry, is not buttressed by strong local political and business pressure and support. It will therefore be asset-stripped until it is no longer viable as the University faces huge reductions in funding and massive debts.

“Ironically all of this is happening at a time when the Coleraine campus is very strong in terms of student demand and is the University's leading campus for research including its world-acclaimed research strengths in biomedical sciences and Celtic studies.

In answer to the statement, a spokesperson for the University of Ulster said: “It is not the University’s policy to respond to speculative statements by anonymous individuals.

“However if members of staff have any issues of concern about the Coleraine campus they are welcome to raise them directly with the Provost of the campus.”